How to Raise Children

In the preceding chapter, we considered the brain of a child in its mother’s womb; let us now examine what happens to it as soon as it has come out. At the same moment that it leaves the darkness and sees the light for the first time, the cold of the outside air seizes it; the most caressing embraces of the woman who receives it offend its delicate limbs; all external objects surprise it; they are all subjects of fear for it, because it does not yet know them, and it has of itself no strength to defend itself or to flee. The tears and cries by which it consoles itself are infallible signs of its pains and its fears; for they are indeed prayers that nature makes on its behalf to those present, so that they may defend it from the evils it suffers and from those it apprehends.

To conceive well the embarrassment in which its mind finds itself in this state, one must remember that the fibers of its brain are very soft and very delicate, and consequently that all external objects make very deep impressions upon them. For, since the smallest things are sometimes capable of wounding a weak imagination, so great a number of surprising objects cannot fail to wound and disorder that of a child.

But in order to imagine even more vividly the agitations and pains that children suffer at the time they come into the world, and the wounds their imagination must receive, let us represent to ourselves what would be the astonishment of men if they saw before their eyes giants five or six times taller than themselves, who approached without making known their purpose; or if they saw some new species of animals that bore no relation to those they had already seen, or merely if a winged horse or some other chimera of our poets descended suddenly from the clouds to the earth. What profound traces these prodigies would make in their minds, and how many brains would be disordered for having seen them only once! Every day it happens that an unexpected event that has something terrible about it causes grown men to lose their minds — men whose brains are not very susceptible to new impressions, who have experience, who can defend themselves, or at least who can take some resolution. Children in coming into the world suffer something from all the objects that strike their senses, to which they are not accustomed. All the animals they see are animals of a new species for them, since they have seen nothing outside of all that they see at that moment; they have neither strength nor experience; the fibers of their brain are very delicate and very flexible. How, then, could it be that their imagination should not remain wounded by so many different objects?

It is true that mothers have already somewhat accustomed their children to the impressions of objects, since they have already traced them in the fibers of their brain when they were still in their womb; and thus they are much less wounded when they see with their own eyes what they had already perceived in some manner through those of their mothers. It is also true that the false traces and wounds that their imagination has felt at the sight of so many objects terrible to them close up and heal with time; because, not being natural, the whole body is opposed to them and effaces them, as we saw in the preceding chapter; and it is this that prevents all men from generally being mad from childhood. But this does not prevent there always remaining some traces so strong and so deep that they cannot be effaced, so that they last as long as life.

If men made strong reflections on what passes within themselves and on their own thoughts, they would not lack experiences proving what has just been said. They would ordinarily recognize in themselves secret inclinations and aversions that others do not have, for which it seems no other cause can be given than these traces of our earliest days. For since the causes of these inclinations and aversions are particular to us, they are not founded in the nature of man; and since they are unknown to us, they must have acted at a time when our memory was not yet capable of retaining the circumstances of things that might have reminded us of them, and this time can only be that of our most tender infancy.

Descartes wrote in one of his letters that he had a particular friendship for all cross-eyed persons; and that, having carefully sought the cause of it, he finally recognized that this defect was found in a young girl he loved when he was still a child: the affection he had for her spreading to all persons who resembled her in some way.

But it is not these small disorders of our inclinations that cast us most into error; it is that we all, or almost all, have a false turn of mind in something; and that we are almost all subject to some kind of madness, although we do not think so. When one carefully examines the character of those with whom one converses, one easily persuades oneself of this; and although one may perhaps be an original oneself, and others judge so, one finds that all others are also originals, and that there is no difference between them except of more or less. This, then, is a fairly ordinary source of the errors of men: this upheaval of their brain caused by the impression of external objects at the time they come into the world; but this cause does not cease as soon as one might imagine.

Changes the imagination of a child who has just left its mother’s womb, through the conversation it has with its nurse, its mother, and other persons

The ordinary conversation that children are obliged to have with their nurses, or even with their mothers, who often have no education at all, finishes ruining and entirely corrupting their minds. These women entertain them only with trifles, with ridiculous tales or tales capable of frightening them. They speak to them only of sensible things, and in a manner proper to confirm them in the false judgments of the senses. In a word, they cast into their minds the seeds of all the weaknesses they have themselves, such as their extravagant apprehensions, their ridiculous superstitions, and other similar weaknesses. This causes them, not being accustomed to seek the truth nor to relish it, to become at last incapable of discerning it and of making any use of their reason. From this comes a certain timidity and baseness of mind that remains with them for a very long time; for there are many who, at the age of fifteen or twenty, still have entirely the mind of their nurse.

It is true that children do not appear very suited for the meditation of truth and for abstract and elevated sciences, because the fibers of their brain being very delicate, they are very easily agitated by even the weakest and least sensible objects; and their soul, necessarily having sensations proportional to the agitation of these fibers, abandons metaphysical thoughts and those of pure intellection, to apply itself solely to its sensations. Thus, it seems that children cannot consider with sufficient attention the pure ideas of truth, being so often and so easily distracted by the confused ideas of the senses.

However, one can answer, first, that it is easier for a child of seven years to free itself from the errors to which the senses lead it, than for a person of sixty who has followed the prejudices of childhood all his life. Second, that if a child is not capable of the clear and distinct ideas of truth, it is at least capable of being warned that its senses deceive it on all sorts of occasions; and if one does not teach it the truth, at least one should not entertain it nor strengthen it in its errors. Finally, the youngest children, however overwhelmed they may be by agreeable and painful feelings, nevertheless learn in a short time what persons of advanced age cannot do in much more time — such as the knowledge of the order and relations that exist between all the words and all the things they see and hear. For although these things depend hardly at all on anything but memory, it nevertheless appears that they make much use of their reason in the manner in which they learn their language.

Advice for raising them well

But since the facility that the fibers of children’s brains have for receiving striking impressions from sensible objects is the cause for which they are judged incapable of abstract sciences, it is difficult to remedy this. For one must admit that if children were kept without fear, without desires, and without hopes; if they were made to suffer no pains; if they were kept as far as possible from their little pleasures — one could teach them, as soon as they could speak, the most difficult and abstract things, or at least sensible mathematics, mechanics, and other similar things that are necessary in the course of life. But they are by no means likely to apply their minds to abstract sciences, when they are agitated by desires and troubled by fears — which it is very necessary to consider carefully.

For just as an ambitious man who had just lost his property and his honor, or who had been raised suddenly to a great dignity he had not hoped for, would not be in a state to solve questions of metaphysics or algebraic equations, but only to do the things that the present passion would inspire in him — so children, in whose brain an apple or some sweets make impressions as profound as offices and grandeurs make in that of a man of forty, are not in a state to listen to the abstract truths taught to them. So that one can say that there is nothing so contrary to the advancement of children in the sciences as the continual amusements with which they are rewarded, and the pains with which they are punished and continually threatened.

But what is infinitely more considerable is that these fears of punishments and these desires of sensible rewards, with which children’s minds are filled, entirely remove them from piety. Devotion is even more abstract than science; it is even less to the taste of corrupt nature. Man’s mind is sufficiently inclined to study, but it is not inclined to piety. If, therefore, great agitations do not permit us to study, although there is naturally pleasure in it, how could it be that children, who are wholly occupied with the sensible pleasures with which they are rewarded and the pains with which they are frightened, should still preserve enough freedom of mind to relish things of piety?

The capacity of the mind is very limited; it does not take many things to fill it; and when the mind is full, it is incapable of new thoughts unless it first empties itself. But when the mind is filled with sensible ideas, it does not empty itself as it pleases. To conceive this, one must consider that we are all ceaselessly drawn toward good by the inclinations of nature; and that pleasure being the mark by which we distinguish it from evil, it is necessary that pleasure touch us and occupy us more than all the rest. Pleasure being therefore attached to the use of sensible things because they are the good of man’s body, there is a kind of necessity that these goods fill the capacity of our mind until God pours upon them a certain bitterness that gives us disgust and horror for them, or until He makes us feel by His grace that sweetness of heaven which effaces all the sweetnesses of earth: dando menti cœlestem delectationem, qua omnis terrena delectatio superetur [giving to the mind a heavenly delight by which all earthly delight is surpassed].

But because we are as much drawn to flee evil as to love good, and because pain is the mark that nature has attached to evil, all that we have just said of pleasure must, in a contrary sense, be understood of pain.

Since, then, the things that make us feel pleasure and pain fill the capacity of the mind, and it is not in our power to leave them and not to be touched by them when we wish; it is evident that one cannot make children, any more than the rest of men, relish piety, if one does not begin, according to the precepts of the Gospel, by depriving them of all things that touch the senses and excite great desires and great fears — since all the passions obscure and extinguish grace and that interior delight that God makes us feel in our duty.

The youngest children have reason as well as grown men, although they lack experience; they also have the same natural inclinations, although they direct themselves toward very different objects. They must therefore be accustomed to conduct themselves by reason, since they have it; and they must be excited to their duty by skillfully managing their good inclinations. It is to extinguish their reason and corrupt their best inclinations to keep them in their duty by sensible impressions. They then appear to be in their duty; but they are so only in appearance. Virtue is not at the bottom of their mind, nor at the bottom of their heart; they scarcely know it, and they love it even less. Their mind is filled only with fears and desires, with aversions and sensible friendships, from which it cannot free itself to put itself at liberty and to make use of its reason. Thus children who are raised in this base and servile manner accustom themselves little by little to a certain insensibility to all the sentiments of an honest man and a Christian, which remains with them all their lives; and when they hope to shelter themselves from punishments by their authority or their cunning, they abandon themselves to all that flatters concupiscence and the senses, because in fact they know no other goods than sensible goods.

It is true that there are occasions when it is necessary to instruct children through their senses, but this should only be done when reason is not sufficient. They must first be persuaded by reason of what they ought to do; and if they do not have enough light to recognize their obligations, it seems that they should be left alone for some time. For it would not be to instruct them to force them to do outwardly what they do not believe they ought to do, since it is the mind that must be instructed and not the body. But if they refuse to do what reason shows them they ought to do, this must never be tolerated; and one must rather go to some sort of excess, for on these occasions he who spares his son has for him, according to the Wise Man, more hatred than love.

If punishments do not instruct the mind, and if they do not make virtue loved, they at least instruct the body in some way, and they prevent one from relishing vice, and consequently from becoming its slave. But what must principally be noted is that pains do not fill the capacity of the mind like pleasures. One easily ceases to think of them once one ceases to suffer them and there is no longer any reason to fear them. For then they do not solicit the imagination; they do not excite the passions; they do not irritate concupiscence; finally, they leave the mind all the freedom to think of what it pleases. Thus they can be used with children to keep them in their duty or in the appearance of their duty.

But if it is sometimes useful to frighten and punish children with sensible punishments, one must not conclude that they should be attracted by sensible rewards. That which touches the senses with any force should be used only in the last necessity. Now, there is no necessity whatever to give them sensible rewards and to represent these rewards as the end of their occupations. On the contrary, that would be to corrupt all their best actions and to lead them rather to sensuality than to virtue. The traces of pleasures once tasted remain strongly imprinted in the imagination; they continually awaken the ideas of sensible goods; they constantly excite importunate desires that disturb the peace of the mind; finally, they irritate concupiscence on all occasions, and it is a leaven that corrupts everything: but this is not the place to explain these things as they deserve.